The Mob Mentality Show

Often in mob programming great facilitators emerge. They rise to the occasion to help each team member learn and contribute. Now imagine a learning context where the great facilitator that emerged was AI. A conversational agent skilled and trained in sponsorship and mob roles. An AI facilitator that not only helps to keep the mob code flowing but also helps students work through conflicting ideas, collaborate, and retrospect. Instead of the usual "divide and conquer" seen in group projects, students build a shared mental model together and truly work together.Join Chris and Austin as they discuss the implementation of these "AI Enabled Mobs for Learning" with Carolyn Rosé from Carnegie Mellon University.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/LpbtwxxhTlQ

What is your coaching method? Does it change how your developers write code everyday? Does it increase agility in your software development organization? 

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss the Samman Technical Coaching Method with Emily Bache. Emily not only shares about her book on this topic but also about the coach role in an ensemble and persuading teams to get coaching and to try ensemble working. 

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/cU8_tqW0tnc

How do you interview candidates? Do you ask them about their views on code, collaboration, and agility? Do you check their ability to recite facts related to the work and industry? Do you ask them behavioral questions about their past or about hypothetical situations?

Come join Chris and Austin as they transport you to a parallel universe for interviews. A universe where instead of talking about code and collaboration in an interview, the candidate actually collaborates on code with the team via Mob Programming. Instead of you hearing how they think they would act, see how the candidate actually acts. You not only see how they go about code implementation, but also refactoring, testing, interpersonal interaction, problem solving, learning, coaching, and design.

In addition, the candidate gets to know by experience what "a day in the life" is like in one of your teams to see if it is their cup of tea.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/CJwtj9abK0o

Do your UX designers, UI designers, front-end developers, and back-end developers work as a team?Or individual silos?#LeanUX may have removed some waste but #MobProgramming breaks down the interpersonal barriers to achieve true collaboration.Misunderstandings fade away.Empathy grows rapidly.The customer receives the fully realized product vision born of a real cross-team effort.We have seen this style of work increase flow, delivered value, and market experimentation.

Join Austin Chadwick and Gary Saunders as they present on the pros and cons of mobbing with UX designers at the "Experience Design With Agile & Lean UX" meetup.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/47Iae0X9D8w

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss with Jenny Carlston about finding mutual understanding, mobbing, diversity, Wardley Mapping, wisecrowding, collaborative decisioning, and to top it off, Lean and learner's mindset. 

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/N0ZIrCPPnic

"Never had a PR over 300 LoC that didn't look good to me".We've all been there. The PR is so big you don't even bother commenting. It's already too late to build the quality in. You make a sad face, comment "LGTM", and click approve.

That's still the case in lots of teams. However, it feels like after a long time the industry, on average, learned the value of the Small Batches idea from #Lean applied it to PRs. 

But, here's the surprise.

What if we told you that teams doing small PRs (with async code reviews) actually have way lower throughput than teams doing big PRs.

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss with Dragan Stepanovic the insights on throughput, engagement, and quality of PRs that he has gathered from analyzing the data in 30+ active repositories. In addition, we chat about the parallel universe of ways of working where you get to have your cake and eat it too. Where you can have both throughput and quality. That universe is called co-creation patterns (Pair and Mob Programming). 

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/f9L47wT5rZk

What if lean, agile, and flow efficiency were not only applied to your product development, but also to leadership decisions? Are there practices that would lead to less wait time and higher throughput for decisions? What is the impact of a unifying goal and increased collaboration (e.g. something like mobbing in management)?

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss these intriguing questions with Johanna Rothman. In addition, they explore topics like management in agile organizations, a system of work that works, and a path to self-management.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/n74s-BBjPMc

How do you end up with legacy code? How come things don't go as planned? Is it as simple as one bad process/practice? Bad tech? Bad people?Conway’s Law describes how team structure influences software structure. But, does software structure also influence team structure? Is there a bidirectional feedback loop between people and code?Join Chris and Austin as they discuss with Michael Feathers about how we can learn to better see our sociotechnical systems and factor that into our decision-making. In addition we talk about the dynamics of team/org sizing and specialization. Lastly we talk about the impact of Mob Programming on a system and the role of an architect.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/AC4ZvN6riPE

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss with Elena Rosheva and David Legge from Red Gate Software about early hurdles of #MobProgramming, mobbing on everything, and striving for remote mob zen. 

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/vDjT4QPT7us

"All the brilliant K-12 students working on the same thing... at the same time...in the same space...on the same computer..."

How are you raising up the next generation of developers? Is there a way to teach kids programming that is less like a "sage on the stage" and more like a "guide on the side"? 

Join Chris and Austin as they discuss with #educators Jeanine Rioux and David Coopersmith how they have used collaborative coding techniques like #MobProgramming to teach CompSci for K-12 students. They not only share how they code with the kids in the classroom but also about how they set up annual #MobProgramming experiences for their students with Chris, Austin, and other professional engineers. Lastly, they discuss how they help themselves and other teachers pursue the goal of being life-long learners.

Video and show notes: https://youtu.be/hnKRX0SV7cM